Page 11 of An Academy for Liars

“Pencils down,” said Eileen, stepping up to the lectern. As she did, all five of the other proctors rose in practiced tandem, and began to climb the steps of the amphitheater, collecting the test booklets as they went. One boy—broad-shouldered and sharp-eyed and sitting toward the back—kept circling answers in a hasty attempt to finish the exam, and as a result was immediately ousted by the same man who owned the dudeen pipe, dismissed with a hissing whisper and a finger pointed toward a dark door at the top of the stairs that Lennon hadn’t noticed before.

There were, in fact, many things she hadn’t noticed. Like, for example, the fact that the room had emptied considerably during the evaluation. More than two-thirds of those who were originally present at the beginning of the exam were now, inexplicably, gone. Lennon hadn’t seen or heard their departures.

Those remaining were led to a small waiting room up a flight of stairs and down another narrow passageway, this one lined on either wall with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that were packed to capacity with old leather-bound tomes. The place smelled of dust and horse glue. From there, they were ushered into a kind of parlor. Its walls were paneled with dark wood and heavy green curtains were drawnacross its only window. There was a fire dancing in the hearth, though it wasn’t nearly cold enough to warrant one.

The test takers were supplied with a few refreshments—small buttermilk biscuits with raspberry jam and pats of butter molded into the shape of flowers, sliced peaches with whipped cream, and sparkling water in ceramic bowls that tasted of rosemary and minerals. Lennon ignored the biscuits but had her fill of fruit and drank several bowls of water in the minutes before she was called into a private testing room down the hall.

Here there were no proctors or lecterns. No fellow test takers. The door groaned shut behind her, and Lennon was left alone in a large, sparsely furnished classroom. The far wall of the room was consumed almost entirely by a clean, green chalkboard. In front of it, an empty chair and a mahogany desk. At the center of the classroom, another single desk and chair, facing its larger counterpart.

Opposite the door Lennon entered through was a stained-glass window left slightly ajar. There were students gathered in the courtyard below, and she caught snippets of their conversation. They were rigorously—and with raised voices—debating some philosophical matter that pertained to the immateriality of the mind.

Unsure of what she was supposed to do, Lennon stalled there by the door for some time, waiting for directions from one of the proctors who’d overseen the first portion of the exam. But they never showed up. Instead, after a few long minutes that felt like hours, a man she didn’t recognize entered. He was slim, and tall enough to need to duck a bit when he walked through the door. His jaw was sharp and faintly stubbled with the ghost of a beard, like he’d intended to shave that morning but had forgotten. His hair too was shorn short. His skin was a rich bronze. Lennon guessed he was about Wyatt’s age,give or take a few years. He was covered in tattoos. The backs of both of his hands were tattooed with moths, and the imagery was repeated on the hard planes of his neck. The moths on his hands had their wings, but a few of the ones on his neck had had their wings ripped from their thoraxes. The imagery was grotesque enough to make Lennon squirm.

The man drew the door shut, frowning slightly, his blunt brows drawn together. He made no apologies for his lateness. Barely registered Lennon when he spoke. “You have a name?” His voice bore what she guessed was a faint Brooklyn accent, though she wasn’t sure.

“It’s Lennon.”

His gaze flickered to her. He looked, for the briefest moment, startled. But he recovered himself quickly, extended a hand covered in tattoos. “Dante.”

Lennon shook it. His palm was calloused. “Nice to meet you.”

Dante walked to the desk at the head of the room and shrugged off his trench coat, draping it across the back of the chair. He set his briefcase on the floor beside the desk. His shoes were brown leather oxfords, mud stuck to the soles. He nodded to the other, smaller desk that stood opposite his. “Sit.”

Lennon obeyed, and stepped into the center of the room and slipped into her seat behind the desk. It was so small her knees pressed painfully against the underside of the tabletop. It seemed like it was built for a child.

Dante settled himself in the chair behind the desk and reached into the inner pocket of his blazer, withdrawing a crude, fat little pig figurine with three stubby legs (two in the front, one in the back) and deep holes for eyes. He set it down on the desk, facing Lennon. “This is the expressive portion of the entry exam,” said Dante. “Your task isto make me lift this figurine without leaving your desk or touching me. Understood?”

Lennon nodded, swallowed nothing. Outside, a drizzling rain began to fall, and the students gathered in the courtyard hastily collected their things and retreated indoors.

“Let’s begin,” said Dante.

Lennon blinked. At a loss, she said: “Um…would you lift the pig? Please?”

“I saidmakeme lift it. Not ask me to.”

Lennon didn’t know what he meant by that (what was she supposed to do, produce a gun from thin air and order him to lift the pig with a finger hooked over the trigger?) but didn’t dare ask. Instead, she focused her attention on the pig, wondered at its origins. Its ears were perky, and Lennon imagined its creator forming them, carefully pinching wet clay between thumb and forefinger and affixing its curlicue tail before ushering it into the oven, where it would bake and blacken until the soft earth hardened into scorched terra-cotta.

“You’re trying to reach me,” said Dante. “Not the pig.”

Lennon raised her gaze, observed him the way she had the photographs during the previous phase of the exam. The terrain of his face told stories. There was a silvery scar to the left of his cupid’s bow, near the corner of his mouth—a busted lip poorly stitched? Lennon couldn’t place his race but could tell that, like her, he was mostly Black but mixed with something else. White, maybe?

Dante endured her scrutiny without expression. His hands remained motionless, palms flush to the desk, flanking the pig figurine. But she noticed a slight fissuring in the stone façade of his expression. He looked almost…disappointed. He checked his watch; it was dull brass with a brown leather strap, and Lennon swore its face was painted to resemble a woman. “This is a waste of time.”

A sudden pang of anger pulsed through her, so sharp it snatched the breath right out of her lungs.

Everything, she realized then, had been leading up to this. This one chance at a success so great it could make up for her countless failings. All that stood between her and success was the smug man sitting in front of her and thatfuckingpig figurine. Lennon would make him lift it. Shehadto make him lift it. She refused to crawl back to Wyatt with her tail tucked between her legs, fresh off yet another failure. In the moment, her desperation grew so dire she felt like her survival and her success at Drayton were near synonymous. And though she didn’t know it then, she was right.

Lennon felt a kind of stirring, a trembling pressure that built behind her sternum, like the drone of bumblebees or a phone ringing on vibrate. It spread through her chest and into her limbs, numbing them, then traveled to her head, thrumming incessantly behind her eyes until her vision doubled, both Dante and the figurine standing on the desk in front of him duplicated, then tripled. Her nose began to bleed again, more profusely than it had the last time, spattering the desk, which was shuddering violently, both chair and table rattling in unison. But then she realized, with mounting horror, that it wasn’t the desk that was shaking…it washer.

Somewhere down the hall, or in the distant recesses of her own mind, she swore she heard the chime of an elevator’s bell.

Dante’s fingers twitched. He flexed them.

The seizing grew more severe, and Lennon feared she would be sick, or scream, or lose herself to the throes of a passion so complete she wasn’t sure she’d survive it. Passion turned to pain. Her ears began to ring, and she realized that this was the pain that Benedict had warned her of. She kept shaking and gripped the edges of the desk with white-knuckled desperation to keep herself from being thrown out of it.

Dante’s hand shifted across the desk, inching toward the figurine, and Lennon gritted her teeth so hard she thought the molars at the back of her mouth might crack. Her vision came back into focus and her shaking dulled to a tremor as she gazed into Dante’s eyes with silent urging. The intangible force of her will moving across the classroom.

The rain came down harder.

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